Current Level

Previous Level

BIO 460 Bioinformatics Protein Structure/Prediction

General Properties of Amino Acids

General structure Amino Acid Structure

 – polyprotic acid with both basic and acidic groups

1. Amino group pKa = 9.6
2. Carboxyl group pKa = 2.3

Zwitterion – dipolar molecules at physiological pH

Basic – positively charged

1. Lysine (Lys, K)
2. Arginine (Arg, R)
3. Histidine (His, H)

Acidic – negatively charged

1. Aspartic acid (Asp, D)
2. Glutamic acid (Glu, E)

Acid/Base Properties of Amino acids

Ampholytes – acidic and basic groups

Ionization of Various R-groups

 the amino acid sequence of its polypeptide chain

Types of bonds

 - Covalent – peptide bond

Peptide bond is rigid due to resonance

Geometry of peptide bond

Starting convention for phi, psi angles

Secondary structure – involves regular patterns of polypeptide folding including helices, sheets and turns – torsion angles describe the possible regular conformations between adjacently linked amino acids – there are only a few select sets of f and y angles that may exist between adjacent amino acids – these angles are limited by both the rigidity of the peptide bond and the physical bulk of the R-group

a-helix – right-handed helical conformation has 3.6 amino acids per turn

Properties of a-helix – 5.4 Å rise per turn, 3.6 amino acids per turn, n, (n+4) hydrogen bonding pattern, 1.5 Å rise per amino acid

Dipole moment set up by the periodicity of the helix (amino end slightly positive, carboxy end slightly negative)

Amphipathic Nature – one side of helix is lined with polar/charged sidechains the other with nonpolar (in the top view to the right the non-polar sidechains are lining the top side the polar/charged sidechains the bottom side)

b-sheets – hydrogen bonding occurs between adjacent polypeptide chains inside of within the same chain as in a-helices 

Two Types of Sheets

Characteristics of b-sheets

Hydrogen bonds shared between neighboring chains

Other views of sheets

Still more way to represent b-sheets

Turns and Loops – used to join helices and sheets together – allow protein structure to quickly change direction and keep its compact shape

b-turns(bends)– involved when peptide chain rapidly reverses direction – see figure below

Characteristics of b-turns

Tight 180 ° turn – 4 amino acids involved

Glycine and proline are usually involved

Omega (W )Loops – have a necked-in shape of the greek uppercase letter omega (W )

Characteristics of omega loops

Compact R-groups tend to fill their cavities

Ramanchandran Plot – indicates allowed conformations of proteins – most of the areas within the plot below (white regions) are not observed within protein structures – exceptions are at place in the protein where there are Pro of Gly

Probability of certain amino acids in the various types of secondary structure

Tertiary structure – describes the folding of the secondary structural elements and specifies the position of each atom in the protein – these structures have come into view using either X-ray crystallography or Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) the coordinates for these proteins are located at the Protein Data Bank (PDB) and can be accessed via the web at (http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/)

Types of bonds – long and short range, covalent and non-covalent

Covalent

Noncovalent

Van der Waal's interactions

Motifs – grouping of secondary structural elements

bab – most common motif

b-hairpin – antiparallel strands connected by tight turns

aa motif – two successive antiparallel a-helices pack together

b-barrels – collection of antiparallel sheets align to form a barrel appearance

 Domains – exist within proteins with greater than 200 amino acids – fold into a globular cluster give the protein a multi-lobed appearance – independent unit that provides the protein with a particular function - often have specific functions – binding sites are often found between the domains

Interaction of 2° structural units to form a native, globular protein. - See the figure below for an all a-helix protein folding into its native globular form – teritary structure

Summary of Tertiary Structure Bonding

Quaternary structure – proteins with more than one subunit are termed oligomers which are constructed from a set of monomeric subunits

Nomenclature

Monomer – single subunit

Oligomer – multiple subunits

Protomer – identical units within the oligomer

Dimer – two subunits

Trimer – three subunits

Tetramer – four subunits

Protein Folding and Stability

Hydrophobic Effect – causes non-polar compounds to minimize their interaction with water – this is the MAJOR driving force in folding a protein into its native structure – the hydropathy index describes the tendency of an individual amino acid – the greater the hydropathic value the greater the chance the amino acid will lie in the interior of the protein - (detergents and organic molecules disrupt these types of interactions)

Electrostatic Interactions – overall an ion pair contributes very little to the overall 3-D shape of a protein – the ion pair tends to lock the two sidechains leaving less freedom to move thereby decreasing the entropy of the system, in addition, the ion pair prevents solvation of each R-group with water

Hydrogen Bonds –the second most important type of interactions within a protein – the bond between the two atoms develops as each shares electrons unequally – hydrogen bond donor and acceptors come together

Chemical Cross-Links – disulfide bonds exist between nearby cysteine R-groups tend to be a stabilizing force within proteins – disulfide bonds inside the cell are rare as the intracellular environment is a reducing – most proteins with disulfide bonds are those that are secreted into the oxidizing environment surrounding the cell – these proteins often act as defense mechanisms (they tend to be toxic toward our cells) – metal ions also tend to lock proteins into rigid conformations

Protein Denaturation/Renaturation – proteins can either be in their native (functional) state or in a denatured (in active) state

Protein Denaturants

Protein Folding Pathway

Step 1 – secondary elements start to form

Secondary Structure Prediction (PELE)

Pauling(1951) - postulated polypeptide chains could adopt alpha-helical or beta-sheet arrangements – these predictions were based upon hydrogen bonding and cooperativity criteria

Chou/Fasman

Selected 15 known protein structures

protein conformational parameter for each a.a.= P = f/<f> - provides a normalization factor for predicting whether an a.a. is found within helices, sheets or coils (P

a= parameter to measure the propensity of a residue to be in the helical conformation) = values above 1.0 are indictors of strong preference to be within a certain secondary structural element (i.e. alanine has a P = 1.45)

Other indicators of helix

a and Pb

General Rule:

 need four helix formers out of six a.a. or 3 beta formers out of five a.a. are found clustered together in any native protein segment, the nucleation of these secondary structures begins and propagates in both directions until terminated by a sequence of tetrapeptides designated as breakers

Assignment of 20 a.a.

Ha = strong helix former

ha = helix former

Ia = weak helix former

ia = helix indifferent

ba = helix breaker

Ba = strong helix breaker

(you can replace all of the a with b for the beta version)

Predictive Rules for Alpha Helix

1. Helix nucleation – cluster of 4 helical a.a (Haor ha) out of 6 a.a. (Ia counts as 0.5 ha)- unfavored is area contains 1/3 or more breakers or less than 1.2 helix formers (4 a.a. is critical because 3.6 a.a./turn of helix; 6 a.a. because if 2 strong helix breakers are inserted than cannot be helical)
2. Helix Termination – extend helix in both directions until terminated by tetrapeptides with Pa < 1.00 (adjacent beta regions also terminate helices)
3. Pro – cannot occur in the center of helix or at C-terminal end
4. Helix Boundaries – Pro, Asp, Glu prefer N-terminal end; His, Lys, Arg prefer C-terminal end

Rule 1:

any segment of 6 a.a. or longer in a native protein with Pa³ 1.03 and satisfying (1 –4 above) is predicted as helix

Predictive Rules for Beta Sheets

1. Beat Sheet Nucleation – locate clusters of 3 b a.a. (hb or Hb) out of 5 along chain - unfavored segments contain 1/3 or more beta sheet breakers or less than 1/2 beta sheet formers (number of a.a. idealized from X-ray structures)
2. Beta-sheet Termination – extend sheet in both directions until terminated by tetrapeptide with Pb < 1.00
3. Glu/Pro occur rarely in beta sheet regions
4. Beta Sheet Boundaries – charged residues rarely at the N-terminus – Trp occurs mainly at N-terminus and rarely at C-terminus

 any segment of 5-residues or longer in a native protein with Pb³ 1.05, as well as Pb> Pa and satisfying 1 – 4 above is predicted as beta sheet.

Problems

1. Method does not independently measure the success of prediction outside of the 15 protein structures utilized to generate the normalization process and predictive rules
2. There may be errors in X-ray data interpretation

the biological neural network typically starts with the neuron (or nerve cell) - the nerve cell has two ends – the dendrites receive the input and the terminal buttons on the axon output the signal – typically the terminal buttons relay this message via a chemical signal to the effector tissue (other nerve cell or muscle cell)

Artificial Neural Networks

 - neural networks comprise a particular tool for pattern recognition – researchers implement rules by providing knowledge to the network as a starting tool – need strong training data- change the training data so less errors are made – for protein structure prediction need high quality structural information and evolutionary information (multiple sequence alignments) – one of the common features today is to note substitution patterns, which allow for identical secondary structure – compare a multiple sequence alignment for a.a. substitutions – compile these replacements and feed into neural network so the program can learn

Prediction of Motifs and Domains (PROSITE)

– organization of secondary structural elements into repetitive, regular elements such as helices and sheets all connected by intervening coils (loops)

Domain – A collection of motifs can be further arranged to provide a stable, discrete region of the protein responsible for a particular function

 – method of determining the function of an uncharacterized region of protein – it is a database consisting of biologically significant patterns and profiles formulated in such a way as to identify to which family of protein the new sequence belongs, or which domain it may contain – typically a cluster of residue types, which known to signify a motif of fingerprint can be identified - the use of protein sequence patterns and profiles to determine function will be the challenge for the genome project for years to come (Proteomics is born)

Definition

Index which assesses the hydrophilic and hydrophobic properties of each of the 20 a.a.

Definition

 – prediction method which utilizes evolutionary information as input to neural network systems to predict secondary structure (including transmembrane helices)

Details of TMHMM

Generate a Multiple Sequence Alignment – crucial part of prediction process

Feed the Alignment into a Neural Network –